Prize in memory of Mihai Pătrașcu

This year, Mihai's family has given an award in memory of Mihai Pătrașcu at the Romanian national IOI team selection contest. The winner of the award is Andrei Heidelbacher, who placed first in the contest. Congrats to Andrei!

Last year was the first time the "Mihai Pătrașcu" award was given. The 2013 winner is Vlad Alexandru Gavrilă. Congrats to Vlad!

Some press coverage of the award (in Romanian):

http://www.cvlpress.ro/02.06.2014/premiul-de-excelenta-mihai-patrascu-acordat-unui-elev-din-timisoara/

and of 2-year commemoration since Mihai's passing:

http://www.gds.ro/Actualitate/2014-06-05/Mihai+Patrascu%3A+un+geniu++care+s-a+stins+la+29+de+ani&hl=mihai%20patrascu&tip=toate

Obituary and Open Problems

SIGACT News just published an obituary in Mihai's honor, prepared by Mikkel Thorup. Here's a local copy.

The obituary includes several open problems that Mihai liked and deemed as important challenges.

Two FOCS'12 events commemorating Mihai's work

There will be two events commemorating Mihai's work at FOCS'12, to be held at Hyatt Hotel in New Brunswick, NJ, on October 20-23, 2012:

• "Workshop on Data Structures (in memory of Mihai Pătraşcu)", on Saturday, October 20th. Please see details and the program here.
• A talk on "The Work of Mihai Pătraşcu", given by Mikkel Thorup, at 8pm, on Sunday, October 21st (right before the business meeting).

Presburger Award Ceremony at ICALP'12

Mihai co-won the 2012 Presburger award (together with Venkat Guruswami), which was awarded this week at ICALP'12. Mihai was supposed to deliver an award talk at the conference. Instead, to honor Mihai's work, his  friend and frequent collaborator Mikkel Thorup gave a presentation that you can view here.

Mihai Pătrașcu Memorial

It is a great loss that Mihai Pătrașcu, aged 29, passed away on Tuesday June 5, 2012, after a 1.5 year battle with brain cancer. 

This is a memorial blog dedicated to Mihai, where you are welcome to write your memories or words of support to those left behind by him, including wife, parents, sister, and numerous friends. Please use the comments section in this post, or send a longer post to mip.memorial@gmail.com to be posted here.

Most importantly, you are encouraged to cheer Mihai with a glass of wine (or other spirits) and send a picture, which will be posted on the Cheers to Mihai! page. Please email them to mip.memorial@gmail.com with subject CHEERS. One picture says more than a thousand words.


A number of people have said great words about Mihai, some linked from the Coverage page.